


marlene mckinnon is not a coward.

by AllThisAndLoveTooWillRuinUs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Coming Out, Coming of Age, F/F, First War with Voldemort, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Minor Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Period-Typical Homophobia, although tbh it's pretty light, an entire family of oc's - Freeform, and a lot of OC's, i use the q and d slur if that bugs u
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 10:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20095444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllThisAndLoveTooWillRuinUs/pseuds/AllThisAndLoveTooWillRuinUs
Summary: aka a series of conversations in kitchensin 1979, in the middle of a war, Marlene starts to come out.





	marlene mckinnon is not a coward.

The war makes a mess of things. Always, always it does. 

But it’s not just the war, is it?

There are lots of McKinnons. Not quite as many as there are Weasleys, but a fair amount nonetheless.

To start there is a Gran and a Pop. Pop is a muggle. When they were young, he’d learned to garden just so he could leave flowers on Gran’s windowsill. She’d tried her best, she really had, to turn him away, being a witch and all. She told him she wasn’t what she seemed, that she wasn’t worth the trouble, he didn’t know what he was getting into. He asked her if she minded.

“Mind what?” Gran had asked, way back then.

“The flowers on your windowsill.” Pop tucked his hands into his pockets, “Do you mind them?”

Gran blinked, “No,” she looked at Pop, way back when he was young and pretty and she could not yet view this as history, “I don’t suppose I do.”

“Then I’ll keep leaving them.” Pop said, and he didn’t smile because he wasn’t quite that sort, too quiet to let people hear his joy, but he nodded in a way that was not at all grim, “Do what you like with them, put them in a vase, tuck them in your hair, leave them on the sill to wilt. Marry me or never speak to me or go out with me every Friday night and never kiss me, I don’t mind. I’ll keep leaving flowers on your window sill as long as you like them there.”

So he did. Every morning for years he’d get up early before work to leave a flower on Gran’s window and every morning Gran would cautiously take it inside and put it in a vase, leaving only a little thank you note on the windowsill. And when he was conscripted into the second war, she quietly left the house each morning to tend to his garden for him. She never used any potions or spells she knew to make the job easier, it felt disrespectful. She learned how to garden just to keep his alive.

When he came home from the war he was different, they all were. He walked with a cane and was even quieter than before but oddly, he’d learned how to smile. Perhaps he’d decided it was too short a life to not be known. He walked outside one morning and found her on her knees in his garden and stood still. She asked him if he’d like to take her on a date that Friday night. He said that he would. She asked him if she kissed him, if he would mind. 

“No,” he said with that new smile, “I don’t suppose I would.”

Then there was Mum and Da. Mum was a witch, but she was born to muggles who were less than pleased to find this first fact out, so Marlene had never met these muggle grandparents of hers. Mum’s family was here, it was Gran and Pop. Mum met Da at Hogwarts, he was the year below her, and he put records on for her on the Gryffindor common room and they danced and held hands and Marlene’s older brother Daniel had been born before they’d even graduated.

Marlene had been so happy when she’d been sorted into Gryffindor. Just like her parents. Daniel had been Hufflepuff, like her grandmother, and that was just as good, really, but she was Gryffindor. Like her Mum. Like her Da. 

She had asked him, once, her Da, if he’d been scared to have a child so young. To marry a muggle-born. 

“Yes,” he’d said.

“Then why’d you do it?” She’d been big-eyed, probably no older than second year at Hogwarts. She hadn’t quite known yet why she would someday have to be brave, but she’d felt it in her bones like the ache of an arm broken long ago, only in advance. 

“Because,” he’d said, as if he was surprised, “I loved her. I was in love with her. I still am. It- the rest of it didn’t matter.” He smiled sheepishly then, caught in the act of trying to explain something as complex and fundamentally unshareable as romantic love to a twelve-year-old. It was silly of him. He knew better. 

He laughed and scooped her up, even though she was much too old for that, to spin her around and place her on the counter beside him as he washed the dishes. “Besides,” he said, “Ian McKinnon is not a coward.”

Her brother was distinctly the child of parents who were very young. He’d had his grandparents around, he was loved and cared for and disciplined and everything was fine, mostly, but Daniel was a solid sort of boy. The sort of boy with eyes who saw through lies said to placate, to assure safety that was only fantasy. The sort of boy who smiled and accepted them anyway, so as not to cause a fuss, and soundly kept his eyes on the horizon for trouble readied for a fight. He was two when Marlene was born and seven when the triplets were. They had their Gran and their Pop and their Mum and their Da but the way he cared for them you’d think he was all they had in the world and they all he had to his name. 

He built universes for them, monsters for them to slay and worlds to save. He bandaged their battle wounds, their skinned knees and papercuts, and cut the crusts off their sandwiches when Gran got stubborn about it. He was never their Da, or their Pop, but he was their brother and their captain. 

The triplets were menaces, devils from birth. First came Anne McKinnon, a red-haired witch born laughing instead of crying. Her brother Alan tumbled out and nicked the nurses’ wallet. When Adrian was born they were finally finally all together and alive and the world shrunk a little into itself in fear. 

They were all sorted into Ravenclaw, eleven years later. It had shocked their family a bit, who had all thought they’d be Gryffindor, the way their grins broke their faces and promised blood or at least some broken china. But they were creators, all of them, and seekers, hungry for all the world could offer. Daniel taught them how to follow a story to its finish, and they grew into hunters, tearing into truth with their teeth. 

Afterward, someone, not Marlene, but someone else who knew them, will remark that if they’d made it, if they’d gotten to grow up, they could’ve made something worthwhile out of _ The Daily Prophet. _

Marlene is not quite any of them. She is not steady and kind, like Daniel, nor fierce and vicious like the triplets. Not quiet like her Pop, nor loud like her Da. Not hard like her Gran nor soft like her Mum. 

Dorcas had once described her as a walking rough edge while holding the collar of Marlene's denim jacket, which was, admittedly, starting to fray. 

Dorcas is quiet. She is muggle-born and she is black and she is smart. That particular combination of things in 1970’s Hogwarts and 1980’s British wizard society means one is quiet. But she likes to say things low enough for only Marlene to hear them. She likes to step barely too close and say something that would be perfectly innocuous if overheard. Something like ‘time for bed, I think’ if James Potter and Sirius Black walk into the common room with their grins a touch too wide and their hands behind their backs. She likes to tug Marlene by the sleeve, walking calmly until they’re in a dark and empty hallway and suddenly she is laughing in full bloom. She likes to share secrets with Marlene, no matter how small, until it feels like the whole of herself is a secret for only the few people she chooses to share it with.

Dorcas is a gemstone you hold hidden in your pocket and run your thumb across to soothe yourself, and she had once described Marlene as a walking rough edge.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she’d asked, already hearing it in her voice, something that could give you a splinter, all low and loud and full of breaks and sounds that shouldn’t be there. She was looking at Dorcas’ smiling face, barely below hers, but her hands hovered for a moment. Because they had gone to put themselves on Dorcas’ waist and that was not allowed. She shoves them into her jacket pockets instead.

“It means you’re tough. You’ve got character. I like that about you.” Dorcas had leaned in barely closer.

For weeks afterward, Marlene convinces herself that Dorcas hadn’t meant anything by it. Or, she had meant something by it, but something kind, friendly. Not the thing Marlene is thinking of. Not the sorts of things Marlene wants to say. No, she is quite certain she is alone in this. She is the only one. 

Well, not the only one. There are Remus and Sirius. There are their fingers tangled together on the Gryffindor couch in an act of obscene bravery. No, not bravery, rebellion. Bravery is something you do because it has to be done, because it will create a better world. Rebellion is something you do because _ fuck you _, even though you know it will only bring plagues upon your house. Literally, sometimes, because the Slytherins had on more than one occasion set frogs upon the common room if they saw Sirius sneak a kiss at dinner. 

And there are others too, surely, she thought. But they are all either nasty rumors you hear in the back row or hidden well enough not to be. It feels very much like she is the only one. 

It isn’t something she talks about, in these times, but somehow everybody knows. She’s not one of the ones who can hide it. When she sits her legs spread out like a man’s and she rests her elbows on them or leans back and spreads her arms out across the back of the sofa, naturally taking up space. Her voice is loud and her hair is short and she never figured out makeup.

One time, at a party, Sirius makes the assumption. It is a birthday party for Lily, who is her friend and also his. Marlene is sat on the counter with a butterbeer and Sirius slings his legs over the back of a kitchen chair. 

“Where’s Dorcas?” he asks, taking a swing of his notably stronger drink.

“Went to visit her parents for the weekend.”

“Aren’t they muggle?” Sirius asks, and it is a testament to the odd trust Marlene has in him that she nods yes without a second thought. He shouldn’t have asked, really, it was vaguely rude, but Sirius Black has never been known for his tact. “Shit, that’s gotta be a weird life, don’t you think? I mean Lily barely talks to her family anymore. Suppose I can’t say much though, not like I talk to mine at all. Nothing about how magic the blood is, parents are shitty all around, it seems.”

“I live with my parents. My grandparents too.” Marlene says it somewhat proudly.

Sirius’ eyebrows shoot up, “Fuck, on purpose?”

“Yes, I quite like them.”

“Huh, fancy that.” Sirius shrugs and takes another sip of his drink. “S’ppose that explains why the two of you never moved in together, huh. I always wondered. You know it’s rather countercultural for you folks. Thought maybe you were putting it off just to break the stereotype.” 

It takes Marlene a minute to understand what he’s talking about. When she does, her heart lodges itself in her throat, but she does her best to sound calm. “Sirius, Dorcas and I aren’t together.”

Sirius pauses, brows pulling together, “You’re not?”

“No. When have you ever seen us kiss or hold hands or call each other girlfriend?” There is definitely a blush creeping onto Marlene’s cheeks, but thankfully he doesn’t notice.

“Well, I always thought. . .” Sirius’ eyes stare into the floor as he obviously reevaluates every experience he’s ever had with Marlene and Dorcas. “Thought you were just the quieter type about it.”

“Nope” Marlene pops the p in the word. She sounds frustrated. She knows Sirius will misunderstand what she’s frustrated about. She wonders if she should let him. 

“Huh.” he says, then nods a bit, “Sorry, I guess.”

Marlene shrugs, “It’s fine,” and they drink in silence for a while.

Her arm is shaking slightly, but after a while, she steadies it enough to say “Pretty sure she’s straight anyway,” before putting the rim of her cup to her lips.

She isn’t looking at Sirius but she can tell he’s looking at her. 

“But not you,” he says, and in an abstract way, Marlene can tell why Remus likes him. There’s something intoxicating about his full attention.

Again, she pops the p on the “Nope.”

Sirius breaks into a grin and gets up off his chair to join her on the counter, slinging his arm around her shoulders and pressing a kiss to the top of her head, “Thank God.”

They sit there on that counter for a while laughing, telling stories about assumptions, correct and incorrect, feeling safe for once. There is music playing in the other room, a party going on, and there are a lot of things she and Sirius Black do not have in common. He hates his family, burned off their tree, and every breath she breathes is on her family’s behalf. He is an instigator, the one who starts the drama, the one who does the chasing, and her only will is survival, protecting the ones who stand behind her. They are different. But for a while, in the Potter’s kitchen, it doesn’t matter because they are the only two of the same species, hidden from a sea of people who will never quite understand. 

Eventually, Lily herself comes in, seeking a glass of water and a breath of air. 

Sirius shouts his greeting and leaps off the counter to spin her around and make her laugh. 

“How’s the birthday girl doing?” He asks as he swipes her cup and fills it for her.

Lily rolls her eyes and leans against the counter, “Why’d you let him throw a party like this? You know I don’t like crowds.”

“False, you _ pretend _ you don’t like crowds. You _ pretend _ you don’t like parties.” Sirius hands her the cup with a smirk, “In reality, you like having everyone you care about here in one place. You like dancing. You like seeing them all happy for once. You just get tired of it quickly, which is why James is ready to make his escape with you, he and his broom are just out that back door.”

Lily blushes, “We can’t just leave our guests, it’s rude.”

“That’s what I’m for. Marlene and I can keep them entertained, can’t we, Marlene?”

Marlene blinks, oddly shy all of a sudden, but she nods. “Yeah, don’t worry about it, Lily.”

Lily pauses, considering.

Marlene looks at her. She is 19 today. She looks it, now, in the way she is so tempted, like she is a schoolgirl again sneaking out to see her boyfriend. But James is her husband. They married last fall, Sirius the best man and Marlene a bridesmaid. She is 19 and she looks it, yet that reality coexists with the fact that she is a married woman, at the frontlines of a war. She and James have already faced down Voldemort before. They’ve all fought death eaters, obviously, (a devastating _ ‘obviously’ _) but Lily and James fought Voldemort himself. He tried to recruit them, and they refused. It was an odd thing, slowly watching your childhood best friends, who you’d seen drool on their pillows at eleven years old, and shared your charms notes with, become something of gods. 

It looks like Lily is going to give in, a smile slowly creeping onto her face, and Sirius raises his hand to wave her off when James bursts in the door, snow in his wild hair.

“Lily! Lily, they’re here-” James sees Sirius and nods, “The Eaters- we need to get everyone out,_ now _.”

Marlene starts to hear the roar of brooms overhead and the _ snap! _ of apparation, and the age-old adrenaline floods her bones, making her feet lighter as the race into the living room to warn everyone to get away. Half the guests are Order anyway, but they manage to get the rest away barely in time before they burst through the windows, knocking down the door. 

Her Mum had tried to teach her to drive a muggle car once. Technically, she did it, she got her license, but she wasn’t very good at it. Her Mum said she was always driving her rearview. Always checking to make sure the car behind her didn’t hit her instead of focusing on not hitting the car in front of her. It had felt similar when Moody told her she would fight better if she wasn’t always watching someone else. He had to tell a lot of people this, admittedly. James, especially, had to be told a lot, and Sirius a fair bit too. But Marlene got it more than anyone. It was her stumbling block, like Peter keeping his stance steady or Remus summoning his Patronus. Dorcas’ was speaking her spell loud enough to put some force behind it. 

Marlene shoots a _ stupify! _ across the room to a death eater closing in on Peter, but gets cornered by another one, nearly knocking over the stack of James’ prodigious record collection. She groans and kicks at the death eater’s knees, knocking them down, casting _ expelliarmus _ before they hit the ground and _ stupify _ as their wand snaps up into her hand. She steps on their crotch as she runs off to get between another one and Alice Longbottom. 

They clear out, eventually. It wasn’t a full-force attack, just a few death eaters who thought it’d be fun to crash the birthday party of a muggle-born Order member married to a blood traitor Order member. But the aftermath is a wreckage encompassing more than just the house. 

Looking nineteen, but not sounding it, Lily asks into the new silence of the home, “Any kills?”

“Just the life of the party.” Sirius quips, and Remus smacks him on the shoulder for it, but it makes James laugh. 

The house is destroyed, windows shattered, couch cushions torn with muddy boot prints, books strewn about with pages torn out, fragments of a record on the floor. Moreso than that though, there is something freshly broken in each of them, a scar opened up, that they could come in here, into James and Lily’s home, on Lily’s birthday, where they were celebrating, and leave them with this. The sense of violation, that their joy had been turned to a crime scene, hung heavy in the air. 

Gideon Prewett starts the cleanup by pointing his wand at the windows and slowly piecing them back together. Alice Longbottom puts the books back together while her husband Frank mends the couches.

“Nothing to be done about the record, mate,” Sirius says to James, solidly, as if everything is fine, but with an odd gentleness.

James nods a bit tensely and looks away, “‘S alright.”

Quietly, Sirius vanishes the _ Queen _ record away. 

Fabian Prewett twisted an ankle, so Marlene is helping Lily mend it and quietly cleaning up the debris of the party. Probably best to leave nothing of tonight for them to wake up to. A half-empty glass knocked over, presumably during someone’s escape, and it’s left a stain in the carpet. Peter offers to let the Potters crash at his if they don’t feel safe enough to sleep there that night, but James just keeps on restoring the protection wards on the house, hopefully stronger this time, and says they’d have to come home eventually. Right now all he wants is to curl up in bed. 

They all take the hint and leave with firm hugs and whispered ‘_ good night’ _s as soon as they finish the cleanup. 

When Marlene gets home, walking through the garden by the light of _ lumos _, her family is all in bed, but Dorcas is pacing in her kitchen. 

“Marlene!” Dorcas says it with a cry, louder than Marlene is used to hearing from her, and Dorcas rushes over to hug her, her grip too tight. 

Startled, Marlene puts her arms around Dorcas’ waist, “What are you doing here? I thought you were visiting your parents.”

“I was,” Dorcas says, and it comes out vaguely choked, muffled by Marlene’s jacket against her mouth, “I got a Patronus from Mary about what happened and I came straight here and you weren’t home yet and I wasn’t sure-”

It is then that Marlene realizes Dorcas is crying. This is new. She pulls back a bit to wipe the tears from Dorcas’ eyes and run her thumbs across her temple.

In all their years at Hogwarts, all the hexes and slurs Dorcas had endured, and in all their battles before this, Marlene had never seen Dorcas cry. Friends had died in front of their very eyes, and still, if Dorcas cried, it was where no one could see. That Dorcas lets her see this, lets Marlene hold her as she cries, it wrecks her.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright.” Marlene tries her best to sound calm, “We’ve fought eaters before. We fought more of them just last week in Diagon Ally.”

“Yeah but together-” Dorcas finally lets her go, but keeps ahold of her collar, in that way she does that always makes Marlene’s heart race. “Always together. I- I don’t like the thought of you fighting- of something happening to you- without me.”

“Oh but it’s perfectly fine if something happens to me while you’re there?” Marlene smiles, hoping to coax one out of Dorcas, “What, put up with my bullshit long enough that you need to see me go?”

It doesn’t work, Dorcas only tightens her grip on the rough denim of Marlene’s jacket, “Don’t say that, don’t even joke about that,” she gulps, “I- I know it’s too much to ask for- for us both to make it out of this alive but-” Dorcas hiccups through her tears and Marlene pulls her closer and tries to shush her, eyebrows drawing together in worry, but Dorcas keeps going, “But don’t go without me. Don’t. Please. I don’t- I don’t want to do any of this without you. I don’t want to die without you.”

Maybe Marlene should have kissed her there, in her kitchen, at one in the morning with tears on her lips still. Or maybe it’s better she didn’t. No way to know, really. 

They stay there in the kitchen a while, waiting for the tears to dry, and Marlene makes none of the promises Dorcas asks of her because they both know she can’t keep them, and Marlene could never break Dorcas like that, but they hold each other in silence until it’s time for bed, and they crawl under Marlene’s covers together, like how Marlene used to quietly make her way to Dorcas’ bed when there was a storm over Hogwarts. 

The day caught up with her, and eventually, Marlene falls asleep, but when she does, she dreams of coming home to Dorcas, in a world where she wouldn’t be in tears. 

As life starts to move on, the days pass and they start to think more about patrols, about the next attack, than about the one at the Potters’, the different parts of that night fragment themselves into separate memories, so Marlene has trouble remembering she came out to Sirius Black the same night Death Eaters attacked the Potter’s house, the same night she saw Dorcas cry and shared a bed with her.

Really, that first bit, the coming out, should be the least important part of the night, but it sticks with Marlene, making her feel oddly different. She’d never said it out loud before. She’d never- well, when it was all in her head there was plausible deniability. Now it has been said. She is gay. She is queer, a lesbian, a dyke. It is_ real _. 

And something in what Dorcas said sticks with her too. It isn’t a new realization, that she is going to die in this war, but the idea of thinking about how she’d like to do it is. She thinks that when she dies she’d like to be out. She’d like it to be known that she was here, that she was a lesbian, that she fought. She’d like her family to know the full of her for certain before she went. 

So after Order drills one day, she takes Daniel for ice cream. Their parents are part of the Order too, but they work full-time jobs and keep a house, so they come to fewer meetings, make fewer patrols. That day they are working, so Marlene and Daniel sit on the trunk of the beat-up family car and eat ice cream. 

“I’m gay, you know,” she says when she has gotten to the cone bit and decides to force the words out because if she doesn't do it now she’s not sure she ever will. 

“I know,” he says with a nod before looking at her, “But thanks for telling me. I’m- I don’t know if you need to hear it, but I’m proud of you, Marlene, I am. And I love you a lot.”

She did need to hear it, she thinks, so she smiles and thanks him before continuing with her ice cream, a light feeling in her chest. 

“You and Dorcas. . .” Daniel poses, as a question, cautiously after a while.

Marlene shrugs, “I- I don’t know. Maybe. I- I have. . . feelings. But I don’t know if she’s- like me, so. . . I don’t know. Either way, that’s not really what it was about. I just- needed you to know.”

Daniel nods, “I appreciate it.”

She tells her parents and her Pop later that night after dinner, but her Gran is away visiting a friend in St. Mungo’s. None of them seem surprised, but they hold her by the hand or the shoulder anyway and tell her they’re proud. Marlene wonders to herself how long they’d suspected, if they’d worked to adjust old prejudices within themselves long before, the first time they saw her wear her keys on her hip, so they could be ready for this day.

She includes it in her weekly letter to the triplets. Maybe she should have waited to tell them in person, but she doesn’t think they’ll mind. Hesitantly, she recounts the attacks at the Potters’ house as well. The triplets require news of the war, saying any news that makes its way to Hogwarts is “rumors distorted through the biases of individuals and retellings” or worse, “that bullshit in the _ Prophet _” but the adults and Daniel refuse to tell them anything, trying to keep them from worrying. Marlene is the only one who understands enough, or perhaps just the only one weak enough, to promise them regular updates. 

When her Gran returns, Marlene catches her washing dishes in the kitchen and starts to dry. They could do it by magic, but some days you just need to do something with your hands. 

“How’s your friend?” Marlene asks, laying a glass out on a towel.

Gran passes another glass over, “They think she’ll recover, thank Merlin.”

“That’s good to hear. What happened, anyhow? You left in a bit of a hurry.” Marlene expects she just slipped and hurt herself or something, but it was polite to ask.

“Death Eaters came to her house. She’s a muggle-born. She got away, but not before they got a few hits in.” Her Gran says this with the casualness nobody’s Gran should be able to discuss a violent hate crime. 

Marlene nearly drops the glass she’s drying, “An _ old lady? _”

That makes her Gran laugh, “What makes you think she’s old?”

“Well because she’s your- because-” Marlene realizes she’s caught herself in a trap.

Gran just laughs and gets back to her washing, “Yes, she’s 63 years old. But she’s muggle-born. The eaters have it out for every last one of them.”

Marlene is quiet for a while, worrying about her mum and about Dorcas and Lily, and wondering how to phrase what she needs to ask.

“Gran,” she finally says, “That day in the garden. When Pop came back from the war. Why’d you ask him out? You must’ve known how hard it would be, marrying a muggle.”

“Because,” she says, more to the dishes in the sink than to Marlene, “I loved him. I wanted to marry him. And besides,” she looks up, and slowly, she smiles at Marlene like she sees right through her, “Eliza McKinnon is not a coward.”

Marlene’s voice shakes, “What- what if I wanted to marry a woman?”

Her Gran wipes a bit of soap off the sleeve of Marlene’s jacket, “Then I wouldn’t have much room to talk, would I?”

Then she smiles and reaches up to hold Marlene’s cheek in her hand, “Marlene, there was nothing wrong with me marrying a muggle, nearly fifty years ago, when everyone called it a crime. There is nothing wrong with you now. There never has been. You’re going to make some girl very happy.”

Marlene nods, blinking back the tears, and they finish washing the dishes, at peace in the kitchen. 

After she’s come out to her family, it’s much easier to do it casually, talking with Lily or joking around with Gideon. She comes out a couple of times to individual members of the Order before coming out to the most of them at large, on a Friday night at Remus and Sirius’ place. 

They’ve gotten closer recently, she and Sirius. In school they were friends, certainly, but in the odd sort of way you had to be friends with any Gryffindor in your year. They’d gotten along better than others, and she felt strangely protective of him, this boy who held goodness she felt needed guarding. He’d hexed MacMillian for her, that one time in 5th year when he’d called her a dyke. In return she’d followed after his brother Regulus anytime she caught him trying to corner Sirius alone to deliver a message. She didn’t know if she’d caught every time, but some of them at least, she’d looked Regulus in the eyes and told him whatever his parents had to say to Sirius could be said in front of her. It didn’t change much, the words still hurt, but sometimes you need a witness. 

Still, there’d been a sense of otherness. Sirius kept to his Marauders unless he was coming to wrangle James from Lily, and Marlene was more than satisfied to spend her days with Dorcas, in their own bubble, observing the castle and sharing smiles. Since the night at the Potters’ though, Sirius pops by during her shift at the wizard record shop to bug her or drives by on that motorbike of his to pick her up for drinks with him and Remus. It’s nice, she likes being friend to Sirius Black.

That night, he’s making a scene in their living room, joking around with her while the Marauders and Dorcas, plus Caradoc and the Prewetts, laugh along.

“Come on, Marls,” Sirius winks at her from his place draped across the couch, over James and Remus, “I know you love me, it’s the hair, ladies can’t resist”

Marlene laughs and takes his opening, because she’s ready now, “Sirius, you know damn well even if I _ did _ swing that way, never in a million years would I hit on _ you _.”

“Ouch!” Sirius groans and presses the back of his hand to his forehead dramatically, to emphasize his pain, “First Minnie now you. How shall my heart bear the sting of such rejection by the fairest of ladies?”

“Aw,” Marlene smiles, “I’m sure your boyfriend will kiss it better.”

“I plan to,” Remus pipes up from the couch and the room loses itself to hysterics, losing the main conversation and fracturing into several side conversations. 

Dorcas is looking at Marlene funny, in a way Marlene can’t interpret for once. 

“Everything alright?” Marlene asks, fiddling with the button on her jacket.

“Fine,” Dorcas says in that low, conspiratory voice of hers, “Just not used to Sirius Black knowing something about you before I do. Not that I mind, I’m- It’s all fine, honest, just surprised me.”

“Me telling Sirius first, or what I told him?”

Dorcas bites her lip, choosing her words carefully, “Sirius hearing first. That- what you told him doesn’t surprise me.”

“Doesn’t seem to surprise anyone, honestly.” Marlene smiles, because it’s true.

“Yeah but,” Dorcas swallows, and takes Marlene’s collar in her hands, “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.”

“No?”

“No,” Dorcas leans in a tad closer, and Marlene knows this is not the time to be looking at her lips but she can’t quite help it, “It matters quite a bit to me.”

This time, Marlene is the one to take her by the sleeve of her soft jumper and lead her outside, through the back door into the cold February air. On their way out, Sirius shoots Marlene a wink, and she flips him the v. 

Marlene shuts the back door and turns to see Dorcas fiddling with the hem of her jumper. She can’t think of the last time she saw Dorcas nervous. 

“What did you mean by that?” Marlene asks, hands stuffed in her jacket pockets, “What does me being gay mean to you?”

“I- I thought-” Dorcas bites her lip again, “I thought we just weren’t going to talk about it.”

“What, the fact that I’m gay? I was just supposed to ignore it forever to keep you from being uncomfortable?”

“No-” Dorcas sighs in frustration and goes to shove Marlene lightly, but ends up holding on to her jacket, “Don’t be dumb about it, you know I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant. . . with everything going on, with the war and- and the way it’s looking for us, I thought we both decided to just. . . ignore how we felt.”

Marlene’s eyebrows shot up, “_ What? _”

“Well it makes sense, doesn’t it?” Dorcas sounds vaguely defensive, “You know it too, we’re not making it out of this.”

It is years before the day Death Eaters will descend upon Marlene’s happy home and take out every last one of them, leaving Lily, deep in hiding, to cry all night at the news, decades before Sirius will point her out in a picture to Lily’s son and tell him what happened to her. But she knows it still, somewhere in her, they are not going to be the lucky ones. If one can hope for any lucky ones at all. 

Dorcas must see something in Marlene, the grudging agreement, so she carries on, “So it seemed like talking about it would only make it more painful,” Dorcas stepped closer, and placed her hand on Marlene’s cheek, rubbing her thumb against her cheekbone, “Having you, having _ us, _ knowing I’m going to lose it to them, to this damn war. . . it would ruin me.”

Marlene thinks about bone-deep feelings, destiny, damnation. She thinks about stepping on Death Eater’s fallen bodies and getting on to the next one. She thinks about how she’d like to die, as someone who was out, as someone by Dorcas’ side. She thinks about Death Eaters crashing the party, wrecking the joy. She thinks about laughing in the kitchen before, and decides that it was worth it. She decides that it is worth it. 

Marlene kisses Dorcas, and it is a long time coming and her lips are soft and Dorcas continues to grip the rough edge that is the collar of Marlene’s jacket as she kisses back and Marlene puts her hands on Dorcas’ waist like she always wanted to, the calloused skin against her soft jumper, sharing one more secret with Dorcas, not because it is something that must be hidden, but because their relationship has always existed for them alone. 

She kisses her, and lets herself be kissed, because she is in love with her. Because the rest of it doesn’t matter. Because she wants to die next to Dorcas Meadowes. Because the joy is worth the wreckage that follows. Because Marlene McKinnon is not a coward.


End file.
